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| I love serving with Hermana Escobar!!! |
Hello
Everyone! How are you all doing? We have had another amazing week here.
Everything is just so incredible and I just love being a missionary so
much! Here are some of the amazing things that happened this week!
We had a pretty busy P-Day on Monday. We were able
to get some shopping done and some other errands. That evening we had an
appointment with a member family. The Hermana made us some really
good Mole (chicken in a sauce made from chocolate, chilies, bananas,
and peanuts) and we were able to have a great conversation with them.
This morning in personal study Hermana Escobar thought that we should
share President Uchtdorf's talk on gratitude with them. We found out why
when we started sharing our message with them. The Hermana talked about
how she just didn't understand why all of these hard things are
happening to her sister that lives in Mexico. They just found out she is
getting surgery because she has cancerous tumors, she lives alone with
her son who is disabled, and has no one to take care of her. We were
able to share the quote from his talk: "We can choose to be grateful, no
matter what. This type of gratitude
transcends whatever is happening around us. It surpasses disappointment,
discouragement, and despair. It blooms just as beautifully in the icy
landscape of winter as it does in the pleasant warmth of summer. When
we are grateful to God in our circumstances, we can experience gentle
peace in the midst of tribulation. In grief, we can still lift up our
hearts in praise. In pain, we can glory in Christ’s Atonement. In the
cold of bitter sorrow, we can experience the closeness and warmth of
heaven’s embrace." The Spirit was soooo strong and the Hermana started
crying because it is EXACTLY what she needed to hear. You could
definitely feel Heavenly Father's love for this precious daughter of His
and how He used us to bring peace to this family in this hard time. It
was so neat to recognize how even though we didn't know that morning
what they were going through and needed, He did and He prepared us to
help and comfort them!
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| Sister Missionary Sleepover! |
Tuesday
was a good full and busy day. We had a lesson with a less active member. We read in the Book of Mormon with him and it went well.
We then had another less active lesson with another Hermano. There
weren't any other women home so we ended up teaching him outside because
it was a beautiful day. Because it has been a long time since he has
been to Church and since he has been worked with before and we have no idea
where he is at, we just started by teaching the Restoration. The lesson
went pretty good, he is just a little confusing and it was hard to
figure out exactly what he does and doesn't remember. After that we went
and did some tracting. Not many people were home but we were able to
see a former investigator who invited us back another day and we got a
potential investigator at another house. We then had a miracle when we
were on our way back to our car. We have a goal to talk to EVERYBODY
because it can be so hard to contact people while being in a car all of the time.
There was this man sitting on his steps with his dog and so we stopped
to talk to him. After we tried talking to him he made some signs
indicating that he is deaf. Then my incredible companion gets all
excited and just starts signing to him!!! She only knows like 10 words
in sign language but she was able to use that and the Spirit and the
gift of tongues (or in this case, signs :-) to communicate and teach him
for 10 minutes! It was so amazing to watch! He seemed to have a lot of
interest so we got his info and are going to try teaching him over
Facebook. It was such a miracle because I don't know sign language and
Hermana Escobar knows very little, but when as missionaries we open our
mouths, The Lord fills them (or signs them)! That evening we had a good
lesson with a less active family. We read Moroni 3-4 about
the Sacrament prayers and discussed the importance of the Sacrament.
Hermana Escobar and I then spent our dinner hour getting the car washed,
vacuumed, and all ready for our trip tomorrow.
We then hurried to our apartment and packed for our over nighter and
then drove to the Griffith Sisters apartment for our "sleepover". It was
so fun! We had 5 companionships in all and we just had a great time
being together and talking. Of course, we were in bed by 10:30, but I am not going to say that we were asleep at 10:30 :-)
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| Hermana Escobar and I at the Chicago Temple! |
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| Valpo Zone Day at the Temple |
Wednesday, an amazing day, was a very early morning, 5:00, because we had to be at the Temple in Glenview by 8:30.
After getting ready, we headed out. I was so excited because I got to
drive there and back. I love driving, especially long drives, and
especially through the city! The drive up was really good we had 3 other
sisters with us and we just had a great time talking and getting to
know one another. Thankfully, traffic wasn't horrible, especially
because we took the 294 on the outer edge of Chicago, so we ended up
getting to the Temple actually a little early. The Temple was amazing.
So peaceful and beautiful. Just what you need to recharge your spiritual batteries! We then went to the mission home for lunch and then a
testimony meeting about the Book of Mormon challenge. It was such a
powerful testimony meeting, I loved it. We then had a class with
President and Sister Woodbury. They were under commandment from Elder
Nelson to talk to us about Eternal Marriage and the importance of the
family. It was a little awkward because we are missionaries and
shouldn't be thinking about that stuff. But it is important because that
is what Satan is attacking now and we need to be ready to defend it.
After a great time with them, I was able to get my interview with
President Woodbury before we headed out. It was a really good interview.
He really is a man inspired of God to help us missionaries be the best
that we can. He helped me out with a lot of things and just helped me
feel peaceful and happy and ready to work.
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| "Temple Selfie" |
Our car then stopped by the
mission office for a bit because we were FINALLY able to pick up Hermana
Escobar's birth certificate and social security card so that she could get her replacement driver's license. We had a fun time
just talking with the office staff before we made our long drive home.
It took an hour and fifteen minutes just to get south of the city, we
hit rush hour just perfectly. And took 3 hours all together to finally
get home. Needless to say, it was a very long and spiritually exhaustive
day, but such a wonderful and incredible day!
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| at the Illinois Chicago Mission Office |
Thursday was a much more boring day compared with Wednesday.
We spent the day at home because Hermana Escobar was in a lot of pain
with her back again, sitting in the car for so long yesterday definitely didn't help.
We were able to get weekly planning done and I worked on various things
and cleaned while she rested.
Friday
we were able to go to Chicago Heights and work. We had another good
lesson with a less active Hermano. We read about Lehi's vision
of the Tree of Life with him and he liked it and seemed to get a lot out
of it. One funny thing happened during this lesson. In lessons with him I
haven't talked a whole lot before because he loves to talk and normally
talks with Hermana Escobar or a member that we have with us because he
knows them better then me.
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Special Picture just for my cousin Zac!
Me sitting at my Mission President's desk... |
But this lesson I talked a little more and he looked
at me one time after I bore testimony and told me that was very
beautiful and that I had good Spanish. He seemed surprised that I could
talk at all because I had never talked much before. It was just funny
because he was so surprised. We then had an interesting, long appointment with
our investigator and her recent convert husband and daughter.
She made us some food and we had another fun experience here. Hermana
Escobar is allergic to gluten and is trying to get better at not eating
it so much. Well this sweet investigator made some pasta and meat, and
gave a huge serving of pasta to Hermana Escobar. She knew she couldn't
eat much of it because she would get really sick, so, anytime the
investigator's back was turned, Hermana Escobar would just load up my
plate with her pasta and I would eat it as fast as I could so it wasn't
obvious.
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Hermana Escobar & I singing
at the Mother's Day Dinner |
It was super fun and I ate a lot of good food! That afternoon
we were finally able to go and get Hermana Escobar's Illinois driver's license.
Everything went well and she passed all of the tests. It was so weird
when she took her driving test because I was not allowed to be with her
and so we were both separated from each other and alone for about 20 minutes. It was
such a strange feeling! That night we then had the Branch activity that
was a Mother's Day Dinner. They had a really good turnout. We actually
had a lot of people there that were friends and relations of one of our
recent converts, so that was super neat. Hermana Escobar and I sang for
everyone, Love at Home, and it went pretty well considering there were
two tone deaf people singing a duet together! :-)
Saturday
was another day where not much happened because unfortunately Hermana
Escobar was back in bed again because of a lot of pain and nausea. I
worked on various things and mostly just tried to keep her from going
crazy because she was stuck in bed all day.
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Screen shot of my Skype call home
for Mother's Day |
We had a good, and very emotional, Sunday. We were at Church at 9:00
because we were supposed to have a meeting, but it didn't happen. So
instead we just listened to the English Ward Sacrament Meeting. Of
course it was mother themed for Mother's Day and there were some good things shared. Then
as part of her talk, one of the speakers read the book "I Love You
Forever". I don't know if you all have
read that, but it is a cute book about the love of a mom. I remember my
Mom reading that to me when I was little. That was kind of hard but also
really special to hear. Church was good. Sacrament Meeting was amazing
because a less active family that we have been working with decided that they wanted to surprise us and
so they decided to come to Church! They haven't been in years, but they
came today. Then the less active son of a active member came too.
Hermana Escobar and I were both soooooo excited! That afternoon we did
studies and then we got to call our families over Skype for Mother's Day! It was so wonderful, but
that 40 minutes definitely goes way too fast. I am so very grateful for my
family and their love and support, and the opportunity we had to talk
together! It is so weird to think that I only have one more missionary
phone call left to make now (at Christmas)!
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| Green skies typically aren't good, right? |
We then had dinner at branch presidente's house. The drive
there was very interesting. As we drove there, all of the sudden storm
clouds moved in, the sky turned green (a tornado warning sign), the wind
started blowing so much, and then the rain just started coming down in
sheets. It was pretty eerie! In the 10 sec it took us to run from the
car to the building, we were completely soaked! As soon as we got inside
their building, the tornado sirens started going off. Luckily, nothing
developed but it was so interesting to be in the middle of an infamous
Midwest storm! It was a good night with President and his family and we
had a good time.
Sweet
family and friends, once again I truly cannot thank you all enough for
your amazing love and support! I love you all like crazy and hope you
have the most amazing week! I love you! Bye!
Hermana Allyse Meanea
Sent from my iPad from the Illinois Chicago Mission
